The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1887-12-24
HOW DRINK AFFECTS LABOR.

The Injury Workin men Inflict Upon
Themselves by Intemperanee.
Working-men generally have no adj
equate conception of the injury they
inflict upon themselves by intemper-
ance. As rule, those who drink at
all do, at times, drink to excess. But
they can not afford to drink even
moderately. Those whose wages are
highest have no margins, after supply
ing the present needs of their families,
and making necessary provision for the
future. to waste in drink. Every cent
so wasted is robbed from their families.
The five to twenty-five cents per day
they spend in "modcrate drinking"
makes all the difference between de-
cent poverty-with the necessares and
many of the comforts of life, and some
saving for the future - and Living
from hand to mouth" with scant
supply of daily needs, and a condition
continually growing worse.
The annual drink bill of the wage
workers of this country has been esti-
mated by George Frederic Parsons to
be 5000, 100000. Others say it is $780,
600, 900. Several witnesses, some of
them employers, others laborers, testi-
fled before the United States Senate
Committee on the Relations Between
Capital and Labor. that ''fully one
tenth of all wages is spent for drink"
1t is plain that the withdrawal of this
sum from the living of people, who,
by the utmost diligence and sobriety,
can only secure enough to supply their
real wants, must produce widespread
restitution and suffering.
But the evils entailed by this waste
do not stop with the suffering it pro-
duces. The drink habits of workmen
aggravate all the grievances of whit h
they complain. and effectually hinder
their removal. One of these griev-
ances is too low wages. But drinking
men are ''bears" on the labor market.
Witnesses before the Senate Commit
tee testified that drinking workmen
keep down wages to the rate they them
selves can command" They lower
wages in three ways:
/. BY uniting themselves for the
best work and pay. The man who
drinks is not so good a workman as
one who does not. From one to three
quarts of beer day, with an OCCASION
al spree on something stronger, DIS
qualities any man for doing full work
and the best work.
2. He is not only weakened or de-
bauched by drink, but his margins are
wasted, and he must work for what he
can get, or beg, or starve. Having
nothing saved, he is Obliged to 90 INTO
the market and sell his labor for what
ever he can get.
s. The price of work depends upon
the demand for work, and the demand
for work depends upon the demand for
the products of labor. and that, in turn,
upon the purchasing power of the peo-
pie.
Now. wage-woikars not only spend
$500, 000,00 annually for drink, but,
as was shown in articles on THE
Waste of Drink" in the Union Signal.
waste as much more in time lost
through the effects of drink. Thus
81. 200, 900, 900 is taken from the means
they would otherwise have to pur-
chase the necessaries Of life. 1t is easy
to see how drink habits of workmen,
which prevent the investment of
$1,000, 0t00 900 in the products of legiti-
mate industry, bear the labor market
by lessening the demand for those
products. But this is not all; for it
leaves out of account the higher rents
dr.. nking-men have to pay. All the
tax rentable property pays to support
the paupers and criminals made by the
liquor traffic is taken out of the peo-
pie in inceased rent. This additional
sum paid by the wage-earner as rent
would otherwise be used to buy food,
clothing, etc., and so would help to
increase the demand for and price of
the labor necessary to produce those
commodities. The economic anomaly
of so-called over-production, while
thousands arc destitute of the very
things said to be over produced. Is
really the result of under-consumption
by people impoverished by drink
Chds. II. Zimmerman, in Union Sig
nal.